Leading NZ Olympic academic honoured by Olympic Committee

Leading NZ Olympic academic honoured by the International
Olympic Committee

March 13, 2014

A leading New
Zealand Olympic academic has been honoured by the
International Olympic Committee.

University of Canterbury
(UC) Associate Professor Ian Culpan has won the IOC Trophy
for his services to the Olympic movement.

Professor Culpan
heads UC’s New Zealand Centre for Olympic Studies at the
College of Education’s School of Sport and Physical
Education.

The IOC Trophy celebrates and honours the 150th
anniversary of the birth of the Modern Olympic Movement’s
founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin.

The trophy was awarded
in recognition of Professor Culpan’s outstanding long-term
research and teaching work focusing on Olympism.

His work
was considered by the IOC to have left a significant
academic and professional legacy particularly in the
research field of Olympism education drawing on a critical
pedagogy.

His work has included numerous international
peer reviewed publications, many internationally invited
keynote addresses, strong presidential leadership for two
Olympiads, support of the New Zealand Olympic Academy and
setting up the New Zealand Centre for Olympic Studies.

He
was the driving force behind New Zealand being the first
country in the world to mandate Olympism within a national
curriculum statement for physical education.

In 2000,
Professor Culpan was awarded an IOC Trophy for his sport and
education research and teaching. Other New Zealanders who
have received an IOC Trophy include Sir Wilson Whineray and
broadcaster Keith Quinn.

Last year, Professor Culpan took
up a visiting professorship at one of Europe’s oldest
universities, Charles University in the Czech Republic. This
year he has been invited to teach into the International
Masters programme on Olympic Studies through the
universities of Loughborough (UK), Lyon (France) and the
German Sports University of
Cologne.

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